


Just Another Day

by Kantayra



Category: Dresden Files - Butcher
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-24
Updated: 2009-12-24
Packaged: 2017-10-05 04:12:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,515
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/37682
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kantayra/pseuds/Kantayra
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Harry faces off against Marcone's latest rap and the grout in Murphy's bathtub.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Just Another Day

**Author's Note:**

  * For [knitmeapony](https://archiveofourown.org/users/knitmeapony/gifts).



The summons was simple: "My offices on Wacker and Dearborn. _Now_." Hendricks came with the summons, adding the unwritten "or else" loud and clear.

"This was supposed to be my day off," I complained and let Hendricks hustle me into one of the Marcone's seemingly endless fleet of luxury vehicles.

"Tough." Hendricks had always had a way with words.

"What's this about?"

"You'll find out when you get there." Apparently, Hendricks was feeling extra chatty today.

He drove in perfect silence. Marcone's club wasn't far. As we got close, I could see flashing red-and-white lights.

"Is anyone _dead_?" I asked with some alarm.

Hendricks just shrugged.

I was ushered through one of the side doors. Whatever the cops were doing there, they weren't keeping people out. But, then, the police had so many reasons to raid a Marcone club that I couldn't even begin to imagine them all.

Hendricks led me up a flight of stairs and into a spacious office. "Here." He grabbed me by the elbow and paraded me right in front of Marcone's desk. With that eloquent pronouncement, he vanished back into the woodwork.

I took stock of the situation. Marcone sat back in a leather chair behind the desk, his hands folded neatly in his lap, looking superbly unaffected by the cops that surrounded him with their shiny handcuffs and guns.

"My attorney," Marcone introduced me.

I gaped. "_What_?"

Marcone just smirked at me like getting busted was nothing but a big joke to him. "Explain to these lovely officers how I was nowhere near the south side during the shootings last week and, moreover, was too preoccupied to even have issued a 'hit,'" Marcone said the word like it was entirely foreign to him and he only had even heard it through the cops' accusations, "that afternoon."

I stared at him blankly for a few moments. Marcone had asked some weird things of me in the past, but this took the cake. Then, I began to put two and two together. If I recalled correctly, the shooting had been on Tuesday, which meant that I actually was Marcone's alibi, and it was true. He _couldn't_ have ordered the hit, because I'd been with him the whole time. My testimony was about to get one of Chicago's dirtiest gang bosses off the hook for yet another rap.

It was such a warm, fuzzy feeling.

"Oh, right," I said slowly. I was pretty sure there was extra subtext to why Marcone had had _me_ dragged in. Any of the nurses at Beckitt's hospital would have sufficed, but apparently Marcone thought I provided an extra layer of discretion they couldn't. Oh, goodie. It's so nice to be seen as a dependable cover by someone as shady as Marcone. "Yeah, sorry, guys." I smiled apologetically at the cops. "That was last Tuesday, right? He was with me the whole time."

The lead detective, whom I'm never met before, snorted in disbelief. "You think you're getting off the hook because you can produce a witness? Fine, we'll arrest him, too, for obstruction of justice."

"Hey!" I protested. "I am not a goon!" It was secretly something I'd been waiting for an excuse to say for years now.

The detective looked at me in disgust.

"In fact, I'm a police consultant." I reached very slowly for my duster pocket, so none of the cops with the big, shiny guns got the wrong idea. I pulled out my ID.

The lead detective - Hawkins, according to the badge in his waist pocket - looked at it and snorted. "Consultant? I've never heard of you."

"I work with, er, the Special Investigations Unit." That was probably one step below saying I was a psychic.

Detective Hawkins obviously thought so as well. He gave me a look that said he was two seconds from hauling my ass into lock-up right beside Marcone.

I gave Marcone an extra-long glare for dragging me into this mess. "Sergeant Murphy can vouch for me." Ouch. Murphy was going to have my hide for this. Better that than have an arrest record as Marcone's goon, though. Marcone would just love to lord that over me. It'd be like him, too, to trick me into his employ by giving me no other legal options.

I glared at Marcone. He smirked evilly back up at me and fiddled with the ring on his finger. Yup, the big, bad mob boss clearly had no issues whatsoever with the entire Chicago PD thinking I was one of his own. And this was how nice my _allies_ were to me. Really, it was a miracle I slept at all these days.

"Karrin Murphy," I informed Detective Hawkins.

Detective Hawkins' partner got on the phone, while the rest of us stood there and twiddled our thumbs, waiting for our game of cat and mouse to resume. I stewed in my own sweat and tried really hard to will Murph to pick up her phone.

Someone picked up the phone. The partner stepped out into the hallway, and we could hear muffled voices while Murphy was updated on the ridiculous situation I'd gotten myself into _this_ time.

Finally, Hawkins' partner stepped back inside. He shook his head in Hawkins' direction. Hawkins scowled.

"She wants to talk to you," Hawkins' partner – Carter, if his badge was to be believed – extended the phone to me.

I gulped and stared at it in horror. Was it better to suffer now or die later? I accepted the phone reluctantly. "Hi, Murph," I said weakly, resigned to my fate.

"Wow," Murphy's voice added an excellent pitch to her sarcasm today. Other days I might have appreciated her fine technique; today, I was its victim. "You know, for a second I was really hoping it was someone else just pretending to be you."

"I'm _still_ really hoping it's someone else pretending to be me," I tried to inject some lightness into the situation. "That way, I could still be enjoying my day off."

"Don't try to be cute," Murphy said testily.

"But I can't help it. I'm so naturally adorable that I just can't contain myself."

Murphy obviously didn't see the situation as being as funny as I did. "Since you're feeling so chatty, would you mind telling me why you're now providing legal council for _Marcone_, Dresden?"

Dresden? Ouch. Murph really was pissed. "I'm not his legal council," I assured her. "He just said that to mess with my head." Behind his desk, Marcone snorted. "I'm just his alibi."

"Well, that's _so_ much better," Murphy retorted.

"Hey, I can't help it if I really _was_ with him," I protested.

Murphy grumbled at that. "So why exactly did you have to drag _my_ name into it?" she demanded.

"Detective Hawkins was about to arrest me," I insisted. "He thought I was a goon. You know I wouldn't survive in lock-up, Murph. I have a delicate hiney."

Murphy snorted. Apparently, she was starting to see the humor in the situation. "I don't know," she teased, "I _do_ have first-hand evidence that you've worked for Marcone in the past."

I relaxed. Merciless teasing, I could take. Murphy actually being mad at me caused weird things to twist up in my stomach. "What, is this blackmail?" I teased back.

I glanced over at Detective Hawkins, and he looked thoroughly resigned to the situation now. He signaled for his men to leave, and they trooped back out in messy single-file. Marcone looked _far_ too smug at this turn of events.

"Well, I _do_ need my bathtub grouted in the near future," Murphy considered.

I winced. Murphy always did know how to play hardball. "Aw, Murph, I always knew you secretly wanted me as your houseboy." A little risqué, yes, but good snark could cover up even the worst of offenses.

Murphy took that with the seriousness in which it had been offered. "Come calling bright and early Saturday morning, bright-eyes."

"Yes, ma'am," I said complete with a click of my heels.

Murphy hung up. I hung up. I handed Detective Carter back his phone.

"We _know_ about those bookies on Clark Street," Detective Hawkins was just finishing up threatening Marcone.

"With a proper warrant, feel free to investigate any office on Clark Street you like," Marcone said in a voice so falsely innocent, a newborn babe wouldn't have been fooled. "I have nothing to do with it."

Hawkins muttered under his breath and stalked out. Carter gave me a parting nod and went after him.

"Well," Marcone drawled and got up to open the liquor cabinet behind his desk, "that was a cozy little visit, wasn't it?"

"If you object to the coziness, you could always leave me out of it next time," I said testily. Getting dragged out of one's home by mobsters in the middle of dinner will do that to a guy.

"But, Harry," Marcone teased, "what would be the fun in that?"

I flipped him the bird and stalked right out after the cops. I could hear his laughter behind me. See, who ever said my life wasn't fun?


End file.
